A while ago I saw a documentary (though the term is used loosely in this context) about women who don't just dress in vintage clothing but extend their vintage lifestyle beyond the wardrobe. Time Warp Wives followed the lives of a couple who tried to live as much in the 1930s as possible (though cheated with the odd concealed electric appliance in the kitchen) when not at work and a young woman who liked to dress in a 1940s style and eat at the table the ol' fashioned way. There was one woman who had entrenched herself so much in the 1950s lifestyle she confessed to not knowing Tony Blair was no longer Prime Minister.

This proud housewife baked from scratch and scrubbed the floors like the Swiffer* mop hadn't been invented. It appeared her only companions were the residents of an old people's home All the women featured liked the idea of living in simpler times – though why you'd pick the Second World War as your nostalgia era was never quite explained. Or examined. It just wasn't that kind of documentary. They cited the old days when people didn't get divorced and were generally happy with their lot.

Sindy is due to celebrate her 50th birthday this year, and her creators are staging a comeback. Like many icons who reach their twilight years, she wants to look her best and so she’s had some work done. No biggie. Barbie’s been doing it for years.

But we’ve always felt that Sindy was more sensible. She had too much dignity to go under the knife. At 50 I assumed she’d look like my GCSE Art teacher, not Sharon Stone. Is the nice girl image that Sindy’s been lugging around in her matronly pockets all these years a fair one? Is she really any more feminist than Barbie?

In 1963, Pedigree Toys introduced Sindy, a clean, girl-next-door doll with a round face and a thick waist and outfits that would make Jan Brady reach for the scissors. She was designed to capture the hearts of British girls in the same way that Barbie had strutted into every home in America.

Sindy’s prudish charms were a hit, and for the next twenty years she dominated the doll industry throughout Europe, knocking up a grand total of 150 million sales in her lifetime.

Sylvia Plath's only novel The Bell Jar turns 50 this year and it's still overshadowed by the links – real or inferred – to her own life, and suicide shortly after it was published in the UK.

It's an intense, personal book and so it seems fitting that I vividly remember not only when I first read it, but what I brought to it in terms of expectations and background knowledge.

My GCSE English teacher was obsessed with Ted Hughes, who was Plath's husband at the time of The Bell Jar and her suicide. Hughes was on our syllabus, but she probably managed to spend a lot more classroom time on him and his work than was strictly intended. And she talked a lot about his personal life – his marriage to Plath and the fact that some people (unfairly, in her view) blamed him for her suicide.

I cannot tell you how much I love the Oz stories. I love Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz film, I love Miriam Margolyes's more faithful reading of the Wizard of Oz on the Story Teller cassette tape and book series only my sister and I seem to know about and I love the film sequel (or fauxquel I suppose, as it had nothing to do with the original film other than the adoption of ruby slippers) Return to Oz.

This fondness for the Oz stories began in childhood, which is my quick disclaimer as to why Wicked and Enchanted are not listed under my Oz loves. Unless L. Frank Baum had something to do with the plot I don't want to know. Smoosh the characters Mombi and Princess Langwidere together in Return to Oz all you like – just don't think you know the strange motivations behind the witches and their actions. 

I recall so clearly sitting at my desk in year 6 during quiet reading time. I remember the desk was one of those old fashioned models I'd yearned to sit at for years. One of the few privileges of reaching the last year of primary school, in all 3 schools I attended anyway, was to sit on benches during assembly and to have opening desks in class. The kind so old they had an inkwell and esoteric slang carved into them. Occasionally we could all make Mrs Walters wince as the desk lids came clattering down 'accidentally'. But it's quiet reading time, the desks are closed and the room is silent and I am reading Carrie's War.

It's actually quite possible that the room is not silent and there is fiddling and prodding and psst-psst-pssting going on in the background. But I am reading Carrie's War and the skull is in the pond and the house is burning and the curse is coming true as a train huffs and puffs Carrie away.